THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE 459 



procuring food increases, so must their wandering habits 

 increase; and hence the population, without any apparent 

 deaths from famine, is repressed in a manner extremely 

 sudden compared to what happens in civilized countries, 

 where the father, though in adding to his labour he may in- 

 jure himself, does not destroy his offspring. 



Besides the several evident causes of destruction, there 

 appears to be some more mysterious agency generally at 

 work. Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pur- 

 sue the aboriginal. We may look to the wide extent of the 

 Americas, Polynesia, the Cape of Good Hope, and Australia, 

 and we find the same result. Nor is it the white man alone 

 that thus acts the destroyer ; the Polynesian of Malay extrac- 

 tion has in parts of the East Indian archipelago, thus driven 

 before him the dark-coloured native. The varieties of man 

 seem to act on each other in the same way as different species 

 of animals the stronger always extirpating. the weaker. It 

 was melancholy at New Zealand to hear the fine energetic 

 natives saying, that they knew the land was doomed to pass 

 from their children. Every one has heard of the inexplicable 

 reduction of the population in the beautiful and healthy island 

 of Tahiti since the date of Captain Cook's voyages : although 

 in that case we might have expected that it would have been 

 increased; for infanticide, which formerly prevailed to so 

 extraordinary a degree, has ceased; profligacy has greatly 

 diminished, and the murderous wars become less frequent. 



The Rev. J. Williams, in his interesting work 8 , says, that 

 the first intercourse between natives and Europeans, " is in- 

 variably attended with the introduction of fever, dysentery, 

 or some other disease, which carries off numbers of the peo- 

 ple." Again he affirms, " It is certainly a fact, which cannot 

 be controverted, that most of the diseases which have raged 

 in the islands during my residence there, have been intro- 

 duced by ships; 3 and what renders this fact remarkable is, 



3 Narrative of Missionary Enterprise, p. 282. 



f Captain Beechey (chap, iv., vol. i.) states that the inhabitants of Pit- 

 cairn Island are firmly convinced that after the arrival of every ship they 

 suffer cutaneous and other disorders. Captain Beechey attributes this to 

 the change of diet during the time of the visit. Dr. Macculloch (Western 

 Isles, vol. ji. p. 32) says: " It is asserted, that on the arrival of a stranger 

 (at St. Kilda) all the inhabitants, in the common phraseology, catch a 

 cold." Dr. Macculloch considers the whole case, although often previously 

 affirmed, as ludicrous. He adds, however, that " the question was put by 



